Up to ten per cent of the man-hours worked in the construction industry are spent on the documentation of work. This project developed a service that increases the efficiency of the burdensome documentation process and thus saves money in the construction industry.

What kind of problem was the project trying to solve?

More than 350,000 man-years are worked every year in the construction industry. This figure comprises both building construction and the property sector. It has been estimated that about 10 per cent of the figure is spend on the documentation of work.

The majority of the current operating models are burdensome and manual, which means that working hours are wasted both in waiting and in the transfer of data both within the company and between different companies (and even sectors).

More efficient working methods and operating models would have the potential to create value to more than 30,000 man-years of work in the construction industry alone. At the annual level, this means salary costs totalling more than EUR 1 billion.

Objective: a new service to save time used for documentation

The experimental project was aimed at creating a concept and a pilot for the DigiLastu service. The service streamlines and facilitates the documentation processes of the partner network in the construction industry with the help of intelligent process management and modern tools. The new operating model aims at a saving of 80 per cent in the working hours currently spent on collecting data and delivering it to the different parties.

In addition to saving time, the objective of the project was to create the preconditions for a data model that would be machine-readable and could be archived across interfaces. This way it standardises the quality of the documentation delivered to the different parties.

The project surveyed the challenges faced by the different business areas and determined the partners with which a wider pilot phase was undertaken. The original plan was to organise a pilot project in production during the KIRA-digi project, but because of the tight situation with resources, this had to be postponed to the beginning of 2018. It now seems that the pilot project will be implemented during 2018.

Material and knowledge for a more extensive individual pilot was collected from the individual experiments organised during the experimental project.

What were the outcomes of the experimental project?

The project managed to test the requirements that are important when acting in the partner network of the construction industry, such as the reliable operation of the system regardless of network connections, a user interface that guides the employee and easy data transfer across organisational boundaries.

The project successfully carried out several small experiments and planned a solution that would be piloted. In addition, it was noticed that the flow of documentation transferred automatically between companies, which was the focus of the pilot, enables considerably more efficient operation than the current operating model and saves money. When a structural documentation process related to an individual work task or project is combined with this all, the quality of the documentation delivered to the customer can be dramatically improved.

It was also observed in the experiments that the requirements for the different types of work tasks that had to be documented varied considerably. It must be possible to conveniently modify the documentation requirements of work tasks and any changes must be introduced rapidly in the partner network.

During the project, two libraries published as an open source code were created: the Reitit Clojure library and the Spec-tools Clojure library. They are software tools that make it technically easier to follow through the experiments carried out with partner companies. By sharing tools, the operators in the sector are able to better share the results achieved during the project and can begin to implement digitalisation in the construction sector more effectively.

In addition, the project was contacted by international operators wanting to test the concept developed by the project in their own business activities outside Finland. This reinforces the understanding that the project has been striving to solve an important problem and that the service would have international potential.

Who benefits?

Companies in the construction industry and those who document work in the real estate and construction sector.